New External Sample Drive: USB3?

macrumors member

I need a 2TB external drive to stream my very large sample libraries for use with virtual instruments (Ivory 2, Large Orchestral Kontakt libraries, spectrasonics etc.).

It's high bandwidth time critical data streaming with I suspect lots of reliance on burst speeds? I'm not sure how this works, and I'm wondering if USB3's latency i've been hearing about on these forums affects this kind of use to the point where it's not much faster than FW800?

If USB3 isn't a significant improvement on FW800 then I may have to look at the more expensive external SSD Thunderbolt options.

thread startermacrumors member

That's something for me to consider but not within my budget and needs at the moment, as I am also doing varoius band and electronic productions that use these samples and I may need to go mobile, two computers wouldn't work with that.

TB Esata might be an option, but it's looking like 200$ just for an adapter (LOL), that said, still an option.

As a budget option I'd love it if USB3 was in practice streaming samples significantly faster than FW800. If anyone can confirm / deny this that would be great!

macrumors 6502

usb3 should be faster.. but who knows if it is in practice. if you end up going that route and have acceptable results - please post!

best luck regardless.

right now i'm running mobile (waiting for that 6,1 mac pro... waiting.. waiting..) mostly using a limited-set template all on ssd on the macbook pro. all i have on the machine is the os, sample libraries, and a few client files. 512 gigs fill up fast - it's a real balancing act to keep things working and allow the ssd enough free space to "move things around" so that it runs at its' optimal setting.

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